Photo: Ümit Yıldırım / Unsplash
The clock burned into the dashcam footage reads 10:17 p.m. on Sept. 30, 2026. A driver on Interstate 80 in Omaha, Nebraska, is rolling through heavy rain when the semi ahead of him starts to come around, the cab swinging across the lanes in front of his hood while the trailer drags behind it. He told the video agency Storyful, according to a post from ABC7 Chicago, that he “thought the semi was merging into the next lane but I saw it going sideways and braked as quick as I could.” The truck missed him. He said he pulled off the road and sat for about 10 minutes before he felt able to drive again.
@abc7chicago A driver’s quick response averted disaster on a rainy night in Omaha, when a semi-truck skidded right across the lane in front of him, dragging its trailer in tow, perilously close to impact. Dashcam footage from Tyler Craus’s car shows the dramatic moment, as rain poured down on September 30. Craus told Storyful there had been “immense rain all night”. And that “you couldn’t see unless your wipers were constantly clearing.” He continued: “I thought the semi was merging into the next lane but I saw it going sideways and braked as quick as I could. Immediately, I was in shock.” Craus said he pulled over and was too shaken to drive for about 10 minutes.
♬ original sound – abc7chicago
No one has reported an injury, and the clip shows no contact between the two vehicles. That outcome is the reason this near miss barely exists on paper. The rules that govern how a truck must be driven in rain are on the books in both federal and Nebraska law, but the systems that report, count, and penalize truck crashes are triggered by damage. When nothing gets hit, the driver’s dashcam file can end up as the only record of what happened.
What the weather service measured on Sept. 30
The National Weather Service office in Omaha/Valley attributes the flooding that night to training thunderstorms, with the heaviest rain starting around 9:30 p.m. and running into the early hours of Oct. 1. Flash flood reports came in from 10:30 p.m. through 2:15 a.m. The service’s event summary lists 4.71 inches at Omaha’s Eppley Airfield, 8.27 inches at a gauge one mile southwest of Millard, and 10.41 inches three miles north of Lincoln. Lincoln’s airport logged 5.77 inches, which the weather service calls an all-time daily record, beating the 5.45 inches recorded on Aug. 29, 1910. Water rescues were reported in both Omaha and Lincoln.
The driver described the same conditions from behind the wheel. He told Storyful there had been “immense rain all night” and that “you couldn’t see unless your wipers were constantly clearing.”
The rain rule truck drivers already operate under
Federal motor carrier rules have addressed this situation since 1968. 49 CFR 392.14 requires “extreme caution” whenever rain, snow, ice, fog, or similar hazards “adversely affect visibility or traction.” The rule says speed must be reduced in those conditions, and if they become dangerous enough, the driver must stop operating the truck until it can be driven safely. Nebraska applies Part 392 to intrastate carriers as well through state statute 75-363, so the rule reaches a truck regardless of whether its load crosses a state line.
Every driver on that stretch, in a car or a truck, was also bound by Nebraska’s basic speed rule, which bars driving faster than is “reasonable and prudent under the conditions.” The posted number is a ceiling under that rule, not a permission slip. State law caps interstate speeds in Douglas County at 65 mph, and on a night when Eppley Airfield took 4.71 inches of rain, a speed under that limit can still break the law.
The video does not show why the truck lost traction. It does not show the truck’s speed, whether the trailer was loaded or empty, or what the driver was doing in the cab. As of Oct. 2, I found no public statement from the Nebraska State Patrol or the Omaha Police Department about the incident, and none of the local reports I reviewed mentioned a citation. The truck, its driver, and its carrier have not been publicly identified.
Why a near miss on I-80 leaves almost no paper trail
Nebraska’s crash reporting law, statute 60-699, requires a driver to file a report with the state Department of Transportation within 10 days only when a crash causes injury, death, or at least $2,000 in damage to any one person’s property, and the requirement doesn’t apply when a police officer investigates. A truck that slides sideways across an interstate and touches nothing falls outside that requirement.
That gap carries into the national numbers. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Large Truck and Bus Crash Facts 2022 counts 473 fatal crashes, about 12,000 injury crashes, and about 43,000 property-damage-only crashes involving large trucks on wet roads that year. The same report counts 155 large trucks that jackknifed in fatal crashes in 2022. Nebraska had 48 fatal crashes involving large trucks that year, or 24.39 per million residents, a higher rate than neighboring Iowa at 21.88 or Kansas at 22.81. Every one of those figures begins at impact. A semi that nearly hits a car shows up in none of them.
Backfire News has covered other big rigs that got away from their drivers, including a semi jackknifing on ice in Kansas City traffic and a runaway rig on Colorado’s I-70 that needed a gravel escape ramp. Dashcam footage has also driven coverage of the Maryland log truck driver who choked on a drink a mile into his run.
What the dashcam would have been worth in a crash claim
If the trailer had connected, the dashcam file would have become evidence. Nebraska uses a modified form of comparative negligence under statute 25-21,185.09: an injured driver’s damages are reduced by his own share of the fault, and he recovers nothing if his share equals or exceeds the combined fault of the people he is suing. A trucking company’s insurer would examine the car driver’s speed and following distance in the same rain, under the same reasonable-and-prudent standard. Footage showing him braking as soon as the truck turned sideways goes straight to that question.
The money behind the truck has a federal floor. Under 49 CFR 387.9, a for-hire interstate carrier hauling ordinary freight in a truck rated over 10,000 pounds must carry at least $750,000 in liability coverage, a level in effect since Jan. 1, 1985. Whether this particular truck fell into that category is not public. Damage beyond the carrier’s coverage, or a crash where fault is disputed, can push the cost back onto the car owner’s own collision and uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage, and those rules differ from state to state.
What comes next for the I-80 near miss
For the truck on I-80, nothing is scheduled: no charge, no hearing, and no report has surfaced. Unless an agency releases one, the official record of the slide consists of the weather service’s rain totals and the footage the driver chose to share.
Should a clear dashcam video like this one be enough for police to cite a truck driver under the hazardous-conditions rule when nothing was hit, or should enforcement wait for an officer’s own observation or an actual crash?
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